Staysail Stay Tension

[GILow]

Hello Cruisers,

After a bit of thought, I felt I should start a new thread, though this does follow on from the well answered thread I posed on maintaining tension on running backstays.

In that thread I asked about the effects of removing the very robust highfield levers on my running backstays and replacing them with a block and tackle setup.

Roll the clock forward and I have had a chance to put into practice SOME of the advice from that thread. But in doing so, I ran into a different question.

The old setup had highfield levers on both running backstays and the staysail stay. These were/are monstrous big things and allow a LOT of tension to be put on the stays. Much, much more tension than I can get out of anything I do with the four to one block and tackle arrangement that I am attempting to use instead, unless I bring the line from the block and tackle to the winch, and then I run into other problems, including an inability to easily release the line from the cam cleat on the lower block.

But from my other thread I think I understood that I should not need that much tension anyway, and that I had not completely understood the function of the running backstays. I felt they needed lots of tension whereas they were really just to prevent deflection of the mast from the staysail stay tension.

Well, applying Anne's advice, I sighted along the front of our "telephone pole" mast and discovered there is a slight, but noticeable bend in the mast being induced by the staysail stay, even before I attach and tension the staysail itself. This is hardly surprising when I think about it, as I still have one monster highfield lever on the staysail stay, and it makes the staysail stay super, super tight. If I release it, the mast comes back to shape nicely, but no matter what I do, I cannot counter that force with the running backstays without the highfield levers at the back.

So, at this point I am assuming I have too much tension on the staysail stay, and that I need to release it a little, but how much tension should I have? Should I be aiming for a similar sort of tension to that I can obtain from the 4:1 blocks that I have hauled on manually? Should the bulk of the tension really come from the luff of the staysail?

For what it is worth, the staysail stay comes to a point about 2/3 the way up our 50' mast and is parallel with our twin forestays. The "J" of the staysail is about 3/4 of the distance from the base of the mast to the mounting points of the running backstays, so in other words, the running backstays have a better effective angle to counter the forward pull of the staysail stay.

Confused, but feeling like I am closer to getting this one right...

Matt